So I’m a single male who’s subsisted on frozen dinners, take-out, and crackers and peanut butter for years. I’m looking for some suggestions for simple, easy to cook meals that a total novice can make. Preferably ones that are at least reasonably healthy as well.
Please keep in mind that this is for a single person. I don’t really care to make something that I’m going to be eating on for weeks.
Thank you for any help.
Easy Chili
12 ounces hamburger
chopped onion
chili powder
1 can kidney beans
1 family sized(50 ounces) can Campbell Tomato Soup
Brown the hamburger with as much onion as you like. Drain the fat and place hamburger mixture in a pot with the kidney beans and the soup. Add chili powder or other spices to taste. Simmer on low heat, with the pot covered, for about half an hour. Taste to see if seasonings need adjustment, the soup will get less sweet as chili cooks.
Goon Pork
Needs: pork, worcesteshtshire sauce, brown sugar, and a crockpot.
Take one boneless pork roast. Or it can have a bone, it doesn’t matter. Cover pork with brown sugar. Really pack it on there. Make a shallow pool of worcestshire sauce in the bottom of the crockpot. Put the pork in the pot, turn it on low, cover and cook for 8-10 hours. Remove pork, let rest 5-10 minutes, discard fatty bits, pull apart with forks and consume the awesomeness.
If you want sauce with it Emeril’s got a fairly decent vinegar-based one that works very well, but I usually just eat it with a little salt. Or I dry it out under the broiler and sauce it with homemade mojo for a little easy ropa action.
Look for one-pot recipes, make big batches, and freeze individual portions.
One of many variations on a skillet meal:
1/2 pound lean ground beef (or cut up some smoked sausage)
Some olive oil or other vegetable oil
1 large potato, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 medium onion, chopped
minced garlic or garlic powder (if you wish)
Salt and pepper
Options: chopped bell pepper, sliced mushrooms, etc.
Heat the oil over med-high heat. Crumble the ground beef and brown in the pan (or brown up the sausage). Remove. Toss in the potatoes and brown well, stirring and turning from time to time. Add the onions (and peppers, if using them) and turn down the heat to medium. Continue sauteeing until the onions are soft. Add the meat, salt and pepper and continue to cook until the potatoes are done.
I used to live on this stuff, especially made with sausage.
A great cookbook if you are interested in learning to cook is How to Cook Without a Book. It’s not single-serving, but not huge, either. Maybe 4 servings for most things. Plus, once you master the techniques you’ll be able to scale things. You may find that once you are putting more work into cooking, and making better stuff, that you’d like to get more than one meal out of it.
Cooking Light magazine is also a great source for healthy, generally practical recipes. www.cookinglight.com Epicurious is a great source for insanely delicious, often elaborate recipes. www.epicurious.com All recipes is a source for recipes that are usually quite easy, but not necessarily as healthy or delicious www.allrecipes.com
Chicken breast
Stock Cube
Water
Canned cannelini beans
Chorizo sausage (or other spicy italian/spanish sausage)
Spinach or other greens you like
Dissolve the stock cube in cold (tap temp) water in a pan and submerge the chicken breast. Put on a medium-low heat until it just comes to a simmer and cover for 10 minutes. Turn the heat off and leave covered.
Chop the chorizo into pieces and fry off in a saucepan with a lug of oil. Once the oil is golden-reddish and the sausage crispy, toss in the drained and rinsed beans and sautee for a couple of moments. If you like, ladle a spoonful or so of chicken stock from the poaching pan into the frypan.
Steam the spinach quickly in the microwave with a little water or again some of the stock from the pan.
Put the sausage/beans on your plate, put the spinach on top, put the chicken breast on top of that.
The whole thing comes in at a little under 15 minutes, and it’s really filling. I love the beans/chorizo combo on its own as a weekend lunch, with a spoonful or so of philly cheese to make a creamy sauce for it.
In a pan, over medium heat, place one chicken breast per person eating and pour a generous amount of balsamic vinegarette over the chicken. Cook chicken until done, flipping occasionally.
Until you get a feel for how long it takes for chicken to be done, feel free to use a knife to peek inside the largest piece of chicken. If the biggest piece is white (well…done chicken colored) all the way through, the other pieces should be alright too. Feel free to replace balsamic vinegarette with the sauce of your choosing.
Just put chicken wings, thighs, or legs, in a single layer, incrockpot. Add barbecue sauce of choice and heat on low medium until chicken is tender. I like it falling apart. You don’t have to hover over it, but for thicker legs or thighs I turn them over a couple of times.
I recommend* Help! My Apartment Has A Kitchen!* by Kevin Miller.
My brother crumbles up .75 to one pound of hamburger or loose sausage, browns it, drains it, and adds one jar of spaghetti sauce. He cooks one portion of pasta each night, and zaps the sauce to warm it. I think this makes about three or four servings, so if you like pasta several times a week, this might work for you. Eat a salad with it, with Italian dressing.
Speaking of Italian dressing, you can marinate a steak or chicken piece and grill or broil it. This adds a lot of flavor and tenderizes the meat.
You ARE allowed to buy the family packs of meat. Just be sure to also pick up a box of zipseal bags. You’ll probably find the pint and quart sizes to be most useful. Just pack the bags with one portion of meat, press out all the air you can, seal it, DATE AND LABEL IT, and throw it in the freezer.
Frozen veggies generally taste much, much better than canned ones. Also you can take one serving out of a large bag, and not have to worry about eating the rest of it this week.
People sneer at bagged salads. However, I find them darned useful at times, especially when I’m the only one at home.
Nobody says that a salad has to contain lettuce or leaf vegetables. Go ahead and cut up a cucumber, tomato, and onion, for instance, and put your preferred dressing on it.
In cooler weather, broiling is a good option for tender cuts. Just set your oven to “broil”, plop your hamburger or chop or steak or piece of chicken on a greased broiler pan, and pop it in the oven for a few minutes. You can, if you wish, put steak or Worchestershire sauce on beef. I do not recommend oven cooking in warm weather, though.
I second How to Cook Without a Book - the results are incredible and you learn a lot. Especially for a guy - the way it’s structured may appeal to you.
Since I’ve been so busy lately, I’ve been buying chicken breasts when they’re on sale, whipping up a bunch of marinade (search allrecipes.com for a marinade that appeals to you, or you could just use the storebought stuff) and freezing them in individual portions and in twosies for me and Himself. That way, when you thaw it (take it out the morning you want to eat it for dinner and put it in the fridge, or maybe half an hour before you need it put it in the sink and run COLD water over it, still in the bag) it’s already marinated. After that you just have to toss it in an oven at 350, covered, for maybe 25 or 30 minutes (check it with a thermometer - you do have a thermometer, right? USDA says it should be over 165.) and it will be so moist, tender, and flavorful - plus you can use the rest of the stuff in the pan as a sauce. Couldn’t be easier, as long as you plan a little bit beforehand. Also, that’s one way to do one recipe that comes out to single servings that you can eat as far apart as you like.
For a side to that I either toss some of them Steamfresh veggies in the microwave if I’m in a real hurry, or I do one of two super incredibly easy potato recipes:
Cajun sweet potato fries
Take a sweet potato (or more than one, whatever). Peel it. Cut it into discs, maybe half an inch thick, maybe a little thinner. Spread them out on a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Take some cajun seasoning (I use the stuff from Penzey’s, but they sell cajun seasoning at the grocery store), sprinkle heavily. Stick in the oven at, oh, let’s say 400. Take them out when they’re forkable.
Mom’s (everybody’s mom) Onion Soup Potatoes
Take some new (red) potatoes, or fingerlings, or any little potato. Cut them in half or fourths or whatever seems like a reasonable size for them all to be the same size. Dump them in a bowl and toss them with some olive oil and a packet of dry onion soup mix. Spread them out on a baking sheet and bake at 400 for as long as it takes - it should be about 40 minutes but it depends on the size you made your potatoes and how full the pan is.
Both of those potato things are easy, not too unhealthy, and good enough to serve to a crowd. They’re also pretty scalable. In fact, you could serve your mom those premarinated chicken breasts, some Steamfresh corn, and either potato thing and she’d think you’d gotten to be a pretty servicable cook.
ETA - want to know what I’m making right now? This is such a nostalgic pleasure. Get yourself a sweet onion - it can’t just be a regular yellow or white one, it has to be a Vidalia or some other sweet onion. Nice big one. You whack off the top bit and the bottom bit and you peel it. Then you take your knife and you cut it twice perpendicularly about halfway down the onion from the top - the idea is that you want to be able to spread it out a bit but you don’t want it to break and fall apart. Stick a beef bullion cube in the middle of it (this is the only thing I use those cubes for) and stuff some butter down among the “petals” of the thing. Wrap it in foil and bake at 375 for maybe an hour and fifteen minutes. It comes out tasting like awesome. Make sure you tip it into a bowl when you unwrap it so you get all the, uh, salty beefy butter.
Oh, something else I made really recently that’s sooo easy. Quiche isn’t hard, I promise! Here’s the recipe I did, but you can put anything in the world in this that you want - spinach (frozen - thaw it first) and ham would be popular.
2 DEEP DISH frozen pie crusts (I’d normally make my own, but didn’t feel like it - deep dish is important in this so the eggs don’t overflow)
1 onion, chopped fairly roughly
1 red pepper, chopped (you could use green or whatever you like, or another veggie entirely)
1 lb bacon (you could use the microwave stuff if you like)
8 oz cheddar jack shredded cheese (I mean, you could shred your own, but I don’t bother for this)
5 oz shredded parmesan (not the powder in the box)
8 oz sour cream
1 1/2 cups half and half
8 eggs
Salt and pepper to taste
Fry your bacon. Do not flip your spatula in such a way that you get agonizingly burning bacon grease on your face. Thank me later. Put your bacon to drain on some paper towels and crumble it. Saute the onions in the bacon grease (or olive oil if you used microwave bacon) until translucent. Take your pie crusts and split the sour cream between them on the bottom. Dump in the bacon, onions, and peppers. Dump in the cheese. (You can put more in if you can fit it, but these things get pretty full.) Break your eggs into a bowl, stir them up to break them up, and throw the cream in there. Stir it to combine, add salt and pepper, and then pour the egg mixture over the stuff in the pie plates. Stick them bad boys in the oven at 375 for 40 minutes.
You can freeze the second one if you don’t want to eat it right away. You probably will, though - this stuff is really good.
I second the crockpot idea. You just throw everything in and switch it on and you can freeze uncooked portions for those times when you are too busy to cook. Here’s a link to the recipe I use most.
No-one ever guesses it’s not made from scratch.
Here’s my latest one pot wonder:
Pancho Villa Stew
3 cups diced cooked ham
500g chorizo, sliced
1200ml chicken stock
1 can diced tomatoes
1 chopped onion
2 cans cannelini beans with liquid
1 can corn
1 tsp garlic powder (I had to buy this specially, dodgy mercan recipe!)
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp cocoa
1 tsp oregano
Combine and cook on low in crockpot for 7 hours.
I made it up the night before and put it in the fridge using dried beans.
Then I added a couple of extra cups of water in the morning. The original
recipe called for one can of chopped green chillies. I’ve never seen such a
thing here so I substituted 1/2 tsp chili powder.
Another easy thing to do is to dice up meat, chicken or fish and add a bought curry paste and water. Cook on low for 6 or 7 hours*.
*tip: buy a crockpot with a timer or invest in a timer switch for days when you are working
They sell packages of individually frozen fresh fish fillets, like tilapia. They’re small, so take a couple of fillets, and place them STILL WRAPPED in some cold water. Thaw them for about 10-15 minutes. Preheat your oven to 350°.
In the meantime, slice some onion and potatoes. Get some foil and place the potatoes and onions in the foil. Season with whatever you like - garlic powder, salt and pepper. Add a bit of butter and fold up the top, leaving a little air for the steam to circulate. Do the same with the fish, or you could add the fish to the potato packet. I prefer them separate, though. Lemon-pepper seasoning is great for fish.
Bake for about 30 minutes. Serve with a green salad.
Thank you all for the suggestions. I’m going to print this thread out and go shopping for some of this. It all sounds delicious. I don’t own a crockpot, so I guess that goes on the shopping list as well.
Easy potatoes:
Chop or dice a large yellow onion
Melt a stick of butter in a skillet (medium heat)
Cook onion till transparent
In a cake pan, put:
2-3 lbs frozen hashbrowns, uncooked (potatoes O’Brien work, too)
butter/onion
can of cream soup (cream of celery, cream of chicken, whatever) concentrate
8 oz sour cream
8 oz of shredded cheddar
Several Tb coarse ground black pepper, to taste.
Mix well.
Bake @350F for 1-1.5 hours, depending on how tender you like your potatoes
Notes: Tweak per personal taste. Substitute can of cheese soup for cream soup if you love cheese.
When serving, salt your portion to taste.
General notes about cooking:
When possible, leave out salt. You can ruin a whole dish with too much of it.
Salt: make that kosher salt, which usually doesn’t have iodine. I find it almost impossible to oversalt with kosher salt.
Coarse ground pepper is where it’s at…or fresh ground, if you have the energy. So much pepper is “powdered” and loses a lot of flavor.
No. No no no no no.
Don’t leave salt out. Learn to salt properly.
Not every food needs a lot of salt, especially if you’re using stock/bullion or canned condensed soups. They tend to be high in sodium anyway, unless you’re using low sodium versions.
But learn to use salt properly, don’t leave it out. Proper seasoning can make all the difference to a “simple” meal.
Start with a coarse salt, like **lobotomyboy **suggested - kosher salt or sea salt. Something I had recommended to me to try when I was learning how to season properly was to try with sliced tomato. Sprinkle a tiny pinch of salt on a slice of tomato and taste it. It shouldn’t taste salty, but it should taste a whole lot more “tomato-y”. That’s what you’re looking for when you’re seasoning. Not to change the flavour of the food, but to enhance it.
Don’t be afraid of salt. Just remember, add it in small amounts and taste each time. You can add a pinch more but you can’t take it out.
A couple of concerns… 1) It’s personal taste, and 2) some people are watching their sodium. I like more salt than many people and would oversalt it according to their taste and/or dietary restrictions. Not an issue if you’re cooking for one. And of course in some things, like cookies when it’s to be “baked in,” it can’t be omitted.
What I recommend, Goblinboy, is to gain an appreciation for how it all works. I cooked very basic things for years without understanding why I was doing the things the recipe said. If you follow good, simple recipes you can end up with a passable meal, even knowing very little. However, you may not learn much by so doing, and even with a recipe in hand, the kitchen seems like a very mysterious place. (“Why do I add the flour first before adding the milk?”)
Over the past 18 months I have cultivated a much greater understanding of why food does what it does, and it’s made me much more confident in the kitchen.
Cervaise bought me a book called The Basics, which is the best resource on cooking techniques — what is a julienne? what is a chiffonade? what is frying? what is sauteeing? what is a stock? — and recipes for basic things, like bread and mayonnaise and ice cream and so forth.
You might also enjoy watching some of Alton Brown’s show “Good Eats.” He’s the only TV chef I watch (since I don’t have cable). What I like about him is that not only does he tell you what he’s doing (“I’m going to add one egg to this meatloaf”) but he tells you why (“because the proteins in the egg will help keep the meatloaf in its proper shape”). He may refer to kitchen gadets you don’t have (“I’m going to use a bread pan to shape the meat loaf”) but he’ll tell you what to do if you don’t have it (“and if you don’t have a bread pan just put some cold water on your hands and shape it manually”). Alton Brown is my god: especially because he’ll tell you which kitchen appliances are a waste of money. The man uses anything to cook with: I’ve seen him baste a bird using a shaving brush, I’ve seen him smoke salmon in a cardboard box, and I’ve seen him grind pepper with a cordless drill. He’s also got a couple of books out that might teach you a thing or two, if you’re inclined to learn (Gear for your Kitchen (which I have not read) and I’m Just Here for the Food (which I have).